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Founder and CEO of Intechnic, 9th in the world to be awarded Master UX Certification while consulting world’s largest brands on UX.

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Earlier this year, 60,000 technology experts from 170 countries descended on Lisbon, Portugal, to take part in Web Summit, the world’s largest tech conference. As part of Web Summit, I attended MoneyConf, an insurtech and fintech conference, where the world’s leading insurance companies, banks, tech firms and disruptive startups met. Here, I spoke with industry leaders about how they were changing insurance’s long-standing image problem and improving user experience (UX) to better serve customers. Here is what they had to say:

User Experience Is The New Battlefield

Customers are unlikely to do business with any company that doesn’t give them a good experience. “Customers want simplicity, more clarity. 'What did I purchase when I signed the contract?'” said Olaf Frank, head of global applications and interim CIO at Munich Re Group, one of the world’s leading reinsurers. Frank spoke about the propagation of insurance products and services tailored to the individual’s needs, such as on-demand insurance and personalized risk management products.

Customers Want You To Know Them

Insurtech leaders agree that it is all about KYC (know your customer) -- personalization is no longer just about using a client’s first name. With advances in artificial intelligence and deep learning, a subset of machine learning, there is also talk of “deep personalization.” This would allow insurance companies to create products that are uniquely tailored to each customer. Imagine getting a policy that is custom-tailored to your exact needs, lets you start and stop coverage on demand, makes you pay only for the coverage you use, and that can be underwritten within seconds on your smartphone. Artificial intelligence will be key. “You will not be able to compete in the future if you don’t have the benefit of AI,” summarizes Frank.

Torbjørn Lomelde, head of marketing for Tryg, the second-largest supplier in the Nordic market for general insurance, agrees. “The trend is toward more personalized design, content and user experience. We need to both ask and listen to what [our] customers’ expectations are.” Lomelde emphasized the importance of delivering a positive and personalized user experience. Gartner predicts (via Digitalist Magazine) that smart personalization engines that can spot customer intent will cause digital businesses to boost their profits by up to 15%.

Customers Want Self-Service

This type of experience is what customers are starting to expect. “Insurance can be cool. It doesn’t have to be boring. If you are obsessed with customer (user) experience, you have a future,” said Amélie Oudéa-Castera, chief marketing and digital officer at AXA Group, one of the world’s largest insurance companies. “Online is surely the place to buy insurance. Don’t listen to those who say otherwise.”

Indeed, one survey found that customers use Web and mobile applications as their preferred method of communication.

There has long been talk that some types of insurance can only be sold face to face (like New York Life with its agents). It is important to understand that this mindset is rapidly changing, as exemplified by the new life insurance disrupter, Ladder. Gartner predicts that by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationships with the enterprise.

At the same time, people like dealing with people when it comes to making complex and emotional decisions about important purchases like insurance -- they want guidance and reassurance. This puts insurance companies in a quandary: How can they give customers the freedom to do things themselves while providing guidance and support? By humanizing the experience in the digital space, companies can deliver the same level of interaction (and beyond) that was traditionally offered with in-person agents.

Customers Want Simplicity

Shai Wininger, co-founder of Lemonade, one of the biggest disruptors in the industry, doesn’t think of Lemonade as an insurance company. “We are a technology company. We use technology to improve customer experience. For example, when you file a claim, you can submit a video of yourself telling us what happened.” He explained that people are less likely to lie on camera. He then shared an anecdote of a customer who filed a claim for a lost MacBook, later found it and returned the money paid as the result of the claim.

Insurance companies are accustomed to making money off of friction, like making claims processes unnecessarily difficult and coverage that's less than transparent. Members of the insurance industry must recognize that such practices will eventually come back to haunt them. As consumers seek out simplicity, they will choose to do business with companies that eliminate friction and save time. In fact, 67% of customers claim unpleasant experiences as a reason for churn. To make things worse, according to Esteban Kolsky of Gartner, 91% of non-complainers just leave and 13% of them tell 15 more people about their bad experience.

Good UX Is Good Business

In a previous article, I made a statement that resonated with many in the industry: Good UX is good business. The numbers don’t lie. According to one study, when compared to their peers, the top companies leading in user experience outperformed the S&P index by 35%. Several years later, the trend is amplified: By the year 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator, according to a Walker report (paywall). Another study shows that 8 in 10 customers are willing to pay more for better customer experience.

In the recent Econsultancy survey for digital marketing trends, companies were asked to state the single most exciting opportunity for 2018. User experience came in first, beating out both content marketing and mobile marketing!

Insurance companies simply can’t survive without happy customers. The industry now has an opportunity to change its deep-rooted negative image and significantly improve the customer experience. A great place to start is by making customers happy with good UX.